ALIMENTARII PUERI, &c. in Roman antiquity, were certain children maintained and educated by the munificence of the emperors, in public places, not unlike our hospitals. Trajan was the first that brought up any of these alimentary boys. He was imitated by Adrian. Antoninus Pius did the same for a number of maids, at the solicitation of Faustina, and hence, in some medals of that empress, we read Pvellae Favstinianae. Alexander Severus followed his example, at the request of Mammæa; and the maids thus educated were called Mammæanæ.

ALIMENTARY DUCT, or CANAL, ductus alimentalis, is that part of the body through which the food passes, from its reception into the mouth, to its exit at the anus; including the gula, stomach, and intestines. The whole ductus alimentalis may be divided into four parts. 1. That which conveys the food, called the esophagus. 2. That which digests, or corrodes it, called the stomach. 3. That which distributes the chyle, called the intestines. 4. That which discharges the fæces, called the rectum. This duct is said to be the true characteristic of an animal, there being no animal without it, and whatever has it, being properly ranged under the class of animals. Plants receive their nourishment by the numerous fibres of their roots, but have no common receptacle for digesting the food received, or for carrying off the recrements. But in all, even the lowest degree of animal life, we may observe a stomach and intestines, even where we cannot perceive the least formation of any organs of the senses, except the common one of feeling, as in oysters.

ALIMENTARY LAW, was an old law among the Romans, whereby children were obliged to find sustenance for their parents.

ALIMONY, ALIMONIA, in law, denotes that portion, or allowance, which a married woman sues for, upon any occasional separation from her husband, wherein she is not charged with elopement or adultery. It was anciently called rationabile estoverium, reasonable maintenance, and recoverable only in the spiritual court; but now it is recoverable also in chancery. When a woman is divorced à mensâ et thoro, she may sue her husband in her own name for alimony, or maintenance, out of her husband's estate, during the separation, either in chancery, or in the spiritual court.

ALIMOS, in botany, a name given by Greek writers to liquorice, from its quality of making the appetite insensible either to hunger or thirst. ALİNDA, Adıvda, in ancient geography, a town of Caria, whose queen, Ada, adopted Alexander the Great as her son. A medal of this town represents a club, with a lion's skin, and within which, a crown of laurel, emblematical of Hercules; the inscription is AAINAEON.

ALINDESIS, or ALINDES, in the ancient gymnastic medicine, a kind of exercise, wherein persons being besmeared with oil, roll themselves naked in the dust.

ALINGSAS, or ALINGSAHS, an inland town of Sweden, in the province of Elsborg, where there are silk, woollen, tobacco, and pipe manufacturies. Lon. 12°. 20'. E. lat. 50°. 30'. N.

ALIO DIE, in mythology, the formula used by

the Augur when on religious grounds she dis solved the comitia or assemblies of the people, Quid gravius quàm rem susceptam dirimi, si unus augur alio die dixerit.' Cic. de Leg.

ALIPENOS, or ALIPANTOS, from aλiraivos, a negative, and Auraev, to fatten, in the ancient physic, an appellation given to dry topical medicines, or such as have no fat mixed with them. It stands opposed to lipara, or plasters, which have fat in their composition; called also by Celsus, lenia. Galen gives the name anŋ to the remedies which are applied to fresh wounds, in order to check the inflammation, and hasten their healing.

ALIPASMA, in ancient medicine, an ointment applied to the body to prevent perspiration.

ALIPEDE, from ala, a wing, and pes, the foot: nimble; swift-footed.

ALIPEE, a town of Cochin, in Hindostan, belonging to the rajah of Travancore. It is situated on a river communicating with that of Quilon, and is very populous, many merchants residing here who act as agents for houses at Bombay. Pepper, grain, and timber, are the chief exports. Lat. 9°. 42'. N.

ALIPILARIUS, or ALIPILUS, in antiquity, an officer belonging to the baths, who, by means of waxen plasters, took off the hairs from the alæ, or arm-pits. The alipilus answered to what the Greeks called opwaкions. The ancient Romans made it a point of cleanliness to keep the armpits clear and smooth; and in after times went farther, and took off the hair from their arms, legs, and other parts, with pitch, rosin, and the volsella, an instrument for that purpose.

ALIPIUS, bishop of Tagaste, in Africa, the countryman and intimate friend of St. Augustine, and, like him, at one time, a zealous Manichee. He accompanied him to Rome, where he studied law, and had some considerable employments. He embraced the Christian religion, and was baptized by St. Ambrose the same day with his friend Augustine. He afterwards went to Palestine, where he became intimate with St. Jerome. Ón his return to Africa, in 394, he was chosen bishop of Tagaste. He assisted at several councils, particularly that of Carthage, where he shewed his zeal against the Donatists, and died in 430.

ALIPIUS, in ancient history, a geographer of Antioch, and made governor of Britain, by the emperor Julian, to whom he dedicated a work on geography. He was afterwards exiled for following magical divinations.

ALIPOW, Montis Ceti, a kind of white turbith. It is found in several parts of Languedoc, particularly near Cete, whence its name of Montis Ceti. It is sometimes used instead of senna; but is a much stronger cathartic.

ALIPTA, from aλepw, I anoint, in the ancient gymnastics, a slave appointed to anoint the athlete. The aliptæ amount to the same with what are otherwise called unctores or jatralipta. The word is sometimes used for the director, or superintendant of the exercises of the athlete; in which sense, it is synonymous with gymnastes, or pædotriba.

ALIPTERÍUM, adıπτηpiov, in antiquity, the

Falconer's Shipwreck.

ALKA, the auk. See ALCA. ALKADARII, from Akladar, Arab. a decree, a sect of the Mahommedans, who deny any eternal, fixed, divine decrees; being asserters of free will. They are a branch of Moatazalites, and stand opposed to the Algiabarii.

ALKAHEST, in alchemy, compounded of al and geest, Germ. i. e. all spirit, according to Paracelsus and Van Helmont, is a certain fluid in nature, capable of reducing all sublunary bodies, into their ens primum, or original matter or into an uniform portable liquor, that will unite with water, and the juices of our bodies. Van Helmont, declaring that he himself possessed the secret, excited succeeding chemists and alchemists to the pursuit of so wonderful a menstruum; and Mr. Boyle is said to have declared that he had rather have been master of it than of the philosopher's stone. The different conjectures of chemists, with regard to the matter of the alkahest, are innumerabie; some expected to obtain it from sea-salt and mercury; others wrought on equinoctial dew; others on rainwater, others on talc, on zinc, on antimony, &c. &c. But Kunkel very properly asks, If the alkahest dissolves all substances, in what vessel can it be contained? Alkahest is used in a more extensive sense for all fixed salts volatilized, and reduced into a quintessence.

ALKAKENGI, or winter cherry, the fruit of a species of nightshade.

ALKAKENGI, in medicine, is used as an abstergent, dissolvent, and diuretic, and is celebrated for its lithontripic quality; it is also prescribed to cleanse the urinary passages in the gravel, and other obstructions. Its detersive quality also recommends it against the jaundice, and other disorders of the viscera.

ALKALI, in botany. See KALI and SALI

CORNIA.

ALKALI, a term in chemistry applied to an、 order of salts of considerable importance. It has been traced by some to the Arabic word, alkhalet, burnt; but it is more generally derived from the word kali, the name of a plant, from the ashes of which one species of alkali can be extracted. The substances that are met with under the denomination of alkaline, are possessed of certain properties of a peculiar kind; they are mainly characterized, however, by a power of combining with acids in such a manner as to impair the activity of the latter, so that alkalis, as chemical agents, are distinguished by properties the reverse of acids; acids and alkalies being thus generally considered as antagonist principles.

But besides the power of neutralizing acids, and thereby forming certain saline substances, the alkalies are further distinguished by the following properties :

First, they have an acrid taste, and corrosive power when applied to some substances; thus proving caustic to the skin and tongue.

Secondly, They change the blue colour of vegetables to a green, the red to purple, and the yellow to a reddish brown. If the purple have been reddened by acid, alkali will restore the original colour.

Thirdly, They are almost unlimitedly soluble in water; that is, they combine with it in every proportion.

Fourthly, They unite with oils and fats, and form by this union the well-known compound called soap.

There is another class of substances which have a strong analogy with alkalies, especially in reference to their opposition to acids, viz. the earths; these indeed by Fourcroy were arranged among the alkalies, but they have been kept apart by other systematic writers, on the ground of the analogy between the one and the other being far from amounting to an identity of essence and peculiar property.

The true alkalies have been arranged by a modern chemist into three classes.

First, Those which consist of a metallic basis, combined with oxygen. These are three in number, potash, soda, and lithia. Secondly, That which contains no oxygen, viz. ammonia. Thirdly, Those containing oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon. In this class are placed aconita, atropia, brucia, cicuta, datura, delphia, hyoscyamia, morphia, strychina. And it is supposed that the order of vegetable alkalies, may by subsequent discoveries, be proved as numerous as the vegetable acids. The original distribution of alkaline substances was into volatile and fixed-the volatile alkali being known under the name of ammonia, while one of the fixed was called potash or vegetable, because procured from the ashes of vegetables generallythe other soda, or mineral, on account of its having been principally obtained from the incineration of marine plants.

In respect to the principle of alkalescence generally, this, like that of acidity, has recently been the subject of an investigation, which has led to very important inferences. Alkalies and earths, it has already been said, display in their relations to acids, considerable analogy; and the substances that are known under the denomination of metallic oxydes, have nearly the same connexions. Now the constitution of these last having been ascertained, it might have been fair to suppose that the former are of a similar nature; but their real composition was not at all understood, until the splendid discoveries of Sir H. Davy, who, having submitted potash and soda to the action of a powerful galvanic battery, observed that at the negative pole globules were collected, having metallic lustre, while at the positive side, a gas was disengaged, which proved to be oxygen. These results, Sir H. D. fairly inferred, arose from the decomposition of the alkalies, which he thence considered as com